When everything started, I was in Morocco with my family on a trip that had been planned long ago. We had big plans to travel. We were supposed to finish the trip in Marrakesh, visiting my great-grandmother’s grave there, as well as the Jewish neighborhood where my grandparents grew up. On the morning when everything Continue Reading »
If you ask me how I am now, then, in all likelihood, I’ll answer, “Fine” in an optimistic manner, quietly and tersely, and I’ll pull my shoulders up. But the truth is that nothing is fine. For a month now, I’ve been raising my son Kedem alone, because my partner is at the Lebanon border. Continue Reading »
I’m Shir Achdut, 19 years old, in my second year of preparatory studies before I’m inducted into the army. In the past four weeks, I’ve been volunteering anywhere I can, and there’s a sense of dynamism in the air. We heard that there’s a hotel in Netanya that evacuees from the Gaza Envelope arrived at Continue Reading »
A month has passed since October 7, but it feels like much longer. On the other hand, I feel like only a moment has passed—the days are jumbled together into a blurry stain. And despite that, after a month, a kind of emergency routine begins: We make plans, knowing that any moment they might change—because Continue Reading »
I closed my eyes and I remembered that on Friday, the day before the very nature of our lives changed, we went to the beach. After a week of nights that weren’t nights, I closed my eyes and I remembered us at the beach. I remembered the feeling of slick shards of seashells on the Continue Reading »
The war caught us all off guard. Five missiles fell on my town, damaging houses and cars, but luckily no one here was harmed. The sirens, the noises of planes and missiles falling (we call this the “booms”), and grief: this has accompanied us all every day since October 7th. We have felt helpless because Continue Reading »
When the war started, I was with my extended family in my grandmother’s house in Eilat. (Eilat is relatively isolated from the other cities in Israel and is thought to be safe.) The early days were very challenging; we lived together in a small house with many young children and most of the conversations in Continue Reading »
When the war began, I was in the middle of a safari trip in Kenya. Because of the bad cellphone service in Kenya, I wasn’t truly aware of the situation in Israel. I knew that something bad was happening, because my family and friends were in Israel and texted me, but I didn’t understand the Continue Reading »
Since the start of the war, I have primarily tried to keep myself busy. I volunteer. Today in Israel, everywhere you look there’s a place to help out, and a line of people who want to lend a hand. I continue to study, because in the area where I live there aren’t, at the moment, Continue Reading »
My name is Shachar. I’m on a gap year at Mechinat Ein Prat. The war caught us at the mechina, and in a moment, the organization transformed into Lev Echad (one heart), a civilian assistance organization in times of emergency. We immediately opened a command center that operates all day and night, providing transportation support, Continue Reading »